This research focuses on the experiences of three undergraduate white women who are physics and astronomy majors. Specifically we conducted semi-structured, empathetic interviews which reveal how uncomfortable physics environments inside and outside of the classroom exclude undergraduate women. The women give accounts of the behaviors of their male peers and instructors that influenced the physics culture. We use standpoint theory to focus on the experiences of undergraduate women to provide a holistic perspective of physics as well as identify key issues that these women faced in their undergraduate physics program and potential strategies to implement in the future to support undergraduate women in physics and astronomy. Some of their suggestions include providing mentoring for women, holding members of the department accountable, providing feedback for instructors, and training sessions.

Societal stereotypes and biases pertaining to who belongs in physics and who can excel in physics can impact motivational beliefs, e.g., of women and racial and ethnic minority students in physics courses. This study investigates how the learning environment predicts male and female students’ motivational beliefs including physics self-efficacy, interest, and identity at the end of year long (spanning two-semester) algebra-based introductory physics courses. These were courses at a large university in the US taken primarily by biological science majors many of whom are interested in health professions. Although women are not underrepresented in these physics courses, societal stereotypes and biases internalized by female students over their lifetime can still impact their motivational beliefs about physics. Our findings show gender gap in motivational beliefs favoring men. These findings can be useful to provide support and create an equitable and inclusive learning environment to help all students excel in these courses.

Prior research suggests that students’ domain related self-efficacy and interest play an important role in their major and career decisions as well as their retention and persistence in STEM fields. In this study, we analyzed data from individual interviews with 38 female students to investigate their learning experiences in physics courses in order to obtain a qualitative understanding of the factors that shape their self-efficacy and interest. We find that female students’ negative and positive perceived recognition from instructors and teaching assistants (TAs) greatly influenced their self-efficacy and interest and even impacted their desire to persist in STEM majors. We categorize different types of perceived recognition that women reported in our interviews and how they influenced them. These findings can help physics educators reflect on their interactions with students in order to contemplate ways to provide positive recognition and validation to their students. Our research suggests that it is important for instructors and TAs to realize that they have responsibility to intentionally develop an inclusive and equitable learning environment in which all students feel appropriately recognized and feel safe to express themselves and learn from each other.

The colonial roots of science dominate the narrative of physics learning and research. While many acknowledge that physics curricula does not support students from nondominant groups, it has remained largely unchanged. A group of teachers voluntarily met remotely each month to question how one might decolonize a physics classroom. We asked teachers to share how their conceptions of self, others, knowledge, and pedagogy shifted after participating in the group for two years. We found that teachers describe being bound by systemic aspects of their teaching environment (e.g., class size, standards, SES, etc.). However, within those constraints, each teacher felt empowered to push back by reshaping classroom content. Findings show that as a result of their time together, teachers reframed and added content to move towards a more equitable physics education.

The PROSPECT S-STEM hub is researching partnerships between two-year colleges (2YC) and four-year colleges (4YC) that are designed to support transfer students. Before conducting a site visit to a 2YC and 4YC to observe their partnership, we created a partnership profile template (PT) that is intended to communicate back the noticings and wonders in an equitable manner. Also, the PT is intended to be collaboratively constructed by the research team because we all observed different aspects of the partnership. In this poster presentation we will describe how the template questions were divided into different sections and each section was accompanied by a motivation. We will discuss how the sections were motivated by Amey at al. (2010) partnership models, Gutiérrez (2012) & Yosso (2005) equitable orientation to student’s success and  how we incorporated thinking from Battacharya’s (2009) approach for an equitable research design.

Research suggests that students’ self-efficacy, interest and identity in physics can influence their learning, performance and career decisions. However, there are few studies focusing on how inclusiveness of learning environment shapes these motivational beliefs of women and men. Therefore, we conducted a study to investigate how students’ perception of the inclusiveness of learning environment (including sense of belonging, peer interaction and perceived recognition) predicts students’ physics self-efficacy, interest and identity in a calculus-based introductory physics course. Findings can be useful in creating equitable and inclusive learning environments in which all students can thrive. We thank the National Science Foundation for support.

How can we know just how effective our teaching is?  What about students' opinions, as reported on Student  Evaluations of Teaching (SETs)?  Rresearch shows that SET scores are not correleated with effectiveness of teaching.  How about your student scores on standardized exams like the Force Concept Inventory (FCI)?   Looks promising at first until you realizze that your students' gains on the FCI depend more on their thinking skills  than on what you do for them.  But there is a way you can use these scores as a measure of your effectiveness:  1) Use normalized gains G (postscore - prescore)/(100% - prescore).  2) Give students the Lawson Test of Scientific Reasoning Ability.  3) Compare  class average G with other classes having a similar Lawson score.  The figure I provide shows how FCI normalized gain and Lawson scores are correlated.  The data displayed in the graph is derived from 1432 individual scores.   Each data point is an average of 65 individual student scores, a reasonable substitute for class average scores. Compare your average FCI G with G for a point on  the graph with the same Lawson score as your average score.  This kind of analysis has guided me & led to improved gains.